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23 April 1945
Water dripped somewhere—it was always dripping. Between that and the ventilation system's shrill, monotonous, inescapable whine, Jurgen Rosrath could not sleep.
Denied a bunk, he sat on one of the Vorbunker's dining room chairs, his head down on the table. Every bed in the three dormitory rooms had been taken when he and Hentschel arrived. Someone made room for Hentschel, and Rosrath took the chair, consoling himself that some generals down in the Führerbunker were sleeping the same way.
Something stirred in the doorway to the ventilation room. Raising his head, Rosrath already knew what he would see: an ancient, half-stooped over man gliding toward him. The illusion was such that the room appeared to slide around and past the intruder, rather than the man himself moving. Rosrath stiffened; his hands gripped the chair's armrests.
As in their previous encounters, the intruder called his name in a voice too thick, too deep and too Russian. Rosrath—
"It's time?"
He cringed at his own yell. You'll wake everyone, you fool! His hands squeezed the armrests until his fingers might break.
The intruder stopped beside the chair. Stood, or floated—Rosrath wasn't sure which. This was someone who had aged into a mummy, a museum exhibit more than a man who still lived and breathed. His hair, parted in the middle and covering his ears, was white, as was the chest-length beard that buried his mouth. The wool coat he wore, as if it were January instead of April, was tattered and frayed. The eyes were two lanterns guiding him through this dark, damp place. And they illumined—as Rosrath had discovered—men's most secret thoughts.
There were only minutes to act, the intruder said, and no guarantee as to how many.
So this was it. Rosrath should have sprung up. Set to it. Begun the task he had envisioned since February the twenty-second, 1943. Maintaining the diesel generators with Hentschel, he'd thought of it; night after night in his chair, he dreamed it.
But instead he heard himself say: "He's going to kill himself. Everyone's talking about it. Yesterday he had a nervous crackup, I could hear him shouting from up here. He knows the war is lost." He waited, but no reply. "So perhaps, no need for anything? Just let him do it?"
The intruder asked when Hitler planned to accomplish this, and how the Russians were to know.
"Rasputin..." Rosrath himself wilting, hated himself for it. "You know how I feel. But I'm only an electrician's helper."
The eyes locked on his. Did he have the capsule?
Rosrath fumbled in his pocket, felt the bullet-sized vial. He had finagled it from Dr. Haase, and by now every high-ranking official must have had one. "It's here."
Place it in his mouth, the intruder said. Close his jaw shut. He will not even be conscious. No one would be conscious—the intruder could hold everyone asleep, but only for a short time. Rosrath had to hurry, with proof of his deed, to Hermann Goering Strasse where the Red Army would receive it. Then, and only then, would they stop their advance, silence their guns, and cease pounding Berlin into rubble.
Grigori Rasputin, or the projection of him—the man's physical, seventy-six year-old body stood in a tent somewhere outside the city, surrounded by Russian generals—appeared to glide backward, the room sliding forward in a reversal of the first illusion.
"Wait." Rosrath jumped to his feet. "Will you at least tell me how you come and go like this?" What he suspected was that Rasputin really did die in 1916, and that his ghost had resurfaced instead of him. But he knew the old mystic would not answer, so: "Was tonight my idea, or was it Stalin's, or was it yours?"
Rasputin appeared distant now, by some optical illusion, farther away than the wall and still shrinking. A single word floated back: Sophie.
The mystic was gone.
––––––––
Now the awareness of everything returned: the stuffy air that smelled of damp concrete, sweat and cigarette smoke, the generator fumes, the faint rattling of the pumps expelling the water that kept seeping in. And the occasional artillery rumbles from above—word was, the Red Army had the city encircled. Every so often, Rosrath or Hentschel had to shut off the ventilation system to keep it from pumping in smoke and dust from outside.
Rosrath took a step and stopped. His shoes—he'd forgotten how they squeaked. Now, in the quiet, they sounded three times as loud.
When he entered the waiting room, however, the uniformed guard sat rigid at his desk with eyes closed, as Rasputin had promised. Rosrath bent close. Not asleep, but stiff and upright, like the waxworks he had seen at Madame Tussaud's in London.
How does that old man do it?
He stole past the guard and down the stairs, thinking of Sophie Scholl. A university of Munich student, she had a boyfriend (of course) in the army (of course). The military had refused Rosrath. He always seemed to come up on the wrong side of things. He'd missed the first war, born, in fact, the day after Germany capitulated and signed the armistice. Then Hitler arose, preaching steel and masculinity, and Rosrath's own hundred-pound spindle of a body looked more pathetic in the mirror than ever. The blond athletes noticed this, as well as his too-dark eyes and too-dark hair that even began thinning early, and treated him accordingly. To girls, he was invisible.
Sophie, however, noticed him rewiring a fuse box at the university. She stopped and talked to him. She invited him to the cinema along with her brother and some of his friends. When she told him of her boyfriend fighting on the Eastern Front—yet another Aryan marvel, probably—Rosrath couldn't help but feel a sting of jealousy. But he enjoyed his chats with her, and that was enough.
Of course, there was the chance said boyfriend might not return. But he pushed this thought away. He would never wish her grief...even if privately, he stood ready to console her, comfort her and, finally, step in to fill the void in her heart. He could dream, after all.
The stairs reached a landing and turned left. In moments Rosrath stepped into the Führerbunker eight meters below the Chancellery gardens.
He stared down the central corridor—"Tannenberg Alley," someone had nicknamed it—feeling lightheaded. He was in Hitler's domain now: the framed oil paintings, the fine furniture brought down from the Chancellery, announced this. The Führer himself slept only a few meters away.
Two more uniformed men, and one in a suit, sat on benches. They maintained the same upright, rigid state as the guard upstairs. The civilian was Martin Bormann, and the feeling seized Rosrath that he was really close now, for Bormann had made a career of practically welding himself to Hitler. Rosrath approached, stepping between the sleepers. He heard no snores.
Beside the men were bottles of Schnapps, and pistols. Should he take one?—No. His will was ebbing again, and if he stopped for any reason, he might not be able to start back up. Through this door to the left, Rasputin had said, the waiting room. Through there was the study, there should be a grandfather clock. Rosrath heard its steady ticking, and in the gloom he could make out the desk with the portrait of Frederick the Great above it. And here to the right was a doorway that could only lead to the man's bedroom.
The electrician paused, breath coming in rapid pants. This was Adolf Hitler, his mind shouted. Who was Jurgen Rosrath?
Biting his lip, he called Sophie to mind.
Rosrath had no idea she was part of a secret group. University students against the Reich, fighting a war of pamphlets and graffiti scrawled on walls—DOWN WITH HITLER! HITLER THE MASS MURDERER!—until caught, tried for treason, and guillotined.
After that, a new fantasy arose. Rosrath nursed it day after day, brought it here with him. And Rasputin, the Russian who sensed men's thoughts and could project himself into bunkers—it must have drawn him like a moth.
Guillotined.
Clenching his teeth, he grabbed the capsule from his pocket and pushed through the door. And then he froze.
The leader of the Third Reich was sitting up in bed, erect like the tranced ones, but eyes open and very much awake.
Rosrath's stomach turned to ice. What had happened?
Hitler's eyes—those ice-blue eyes, that could hold you in place and erode your confidence in seconds—locked onto him. The gray hair above them, and the gray tuft of a mustache below, seemed to fade away. Rosrath groped for something to say. His resolve ebbed, and he knew it was he who was finished instead of this still-unconquered master of men sitting at ease in his bed.
Well, what is it? That was what Rosrath expected to hear. But instead the eyes dropped to the capsule in the intruder's hand.
"So," Hitler said in a mellow baritone completely unlike his speeches. "It still hasn't ended."
The electrician stood numb. Game up. No chance of any hasty explanation. Hitler had seen right through him.
The Führer pulled himself up straighter, and his swollen belly came into view, making a mound beneath his nightshirt. During these last days, the Führer binged on cake.
"Even now that I have declared suicide, men still seek my life." The eyes probed, investigated, illuminated all of this electrician's dark hidden places and turning them over and examining them, one after another, at his leisure.
Rosrath swallowed a lump in his throat.
"Had Stauffenburg succeeded," Hitler continued, "he'd have surrendered straight away to the Allies. More than a dozen tried to assassinate me before him, and had they succeeded, they'd have done the same. They had no understanding of destiny. It is not Germany's destiny to surrender. November 1918 will not repeat. Not now, not in one thousand years..."
He faltered. Rosrath jolted, realizing that until then, the voice had again become the voice of the Nuremberg rallies, ringing out clear and triumphant. Now the man fairly whispered: "...had the Reich stood that long."
Yes. Hitler and the Reich, the Reich and Hitler. The Führer could expire in peace if he knew the empire he had built, all the grand buildings and monuments Speer had designed for "ruin value" for distant future generations, would continue on in that time. But that was not to be, and to watch his Reich collapse was unthinkable. The Reich was his pulse, his very heartbeat. How could he exist without it? It was his spouse, his mistress, and his offspring in a way no human could ever be.
"I could not fall while it still stood!" Hitler barked loud enough now to be heard throughout the lower level. Somewhere in the back of Rosrath's mind, he expected a knock on the door.
And then the electrician heard his own voice. "Past tense, my Führer. It no longer stands, so you no longer stand."
Hitler stiffened. For an instant, he resembled all the waxworks rigid at their posts throughout the bunker. The eyes betrayed a flicker of surprise, and Rosrath knew the look mirrored his own.
Pressing his advantage, he spoke slowly. "Mr. Hitler, you are dead already. It's your own body the Russians have been shelling, the British and Americans bombing. Your heart goes on beating, but all is lost. You've acknowledged it yourself."
The Führer's haggard face flushed pink. "The war is not—"
"You said it only yesterday! And are you really surprised? Goering warned you not to attack Russia. All you've done is blunder, and now you've wrecked us all!"
Hitler only looked at him. Rosrath understood why. The Reich was crumbling now, its leader no longer surrounded and bolstered up by it. It was no longer his shield. And now, worn down and sickened with anxiety, he was crumbling too. Like his Reich, he was all but dead. Small wonder he had voiced out loud his intention to commit suicide.
As for Rosrath, he stood stunned. Did I just say that? To him?
Hitler's eyes dropped again to Rosrath's closed fist. "A capsule this time?"
Rosrath nodded.
A chuckle escaped the mouth. "Ah. That was half my own plan. Much quieter than bombs, if not as instant. Very well, then. Enough explosions and guns. Let us not disturb the others; let them sleep while they can." The eyes bored into his. "But in taking this upon yourself, you accept certain responsibilities. You will see that Admiral Donitz receives my political testament? He is to be President of the Reich. Goering and Himmler have turned traitor."
Rosrath swallowed. "Yes, my Führer," he lied.
"You shall see that Fraulein Braun, my dog Blondi, and the puppies are cared for. If Fraulein Braun wishes to follow me, I approve. Will you do this?"
"Yes, my Führer."
"Allow me to lie here afterwards. Bormann knows how I wish my remains disposed of. That shall fall to him."
"Yes, my Führer."
Hitler nodded, satisfied. He held out a hand that no longer shook. "The capsule."
Rosrath complied and turned away. Perhaps Hitler expected him to leave the room. But then Rosrath would have to return to find him—blue in the face? Staring, his mouth foaming? Twitching? A shuddering noise, and a sharp smell of almonds, snapped him aware again.
Had this been the Führer of ten years ago, the titan who could mesmerize whole crowds, Rosrath would have recoiled. But this Hitler had wilted, decayed, his clothes spotted with the remnants of a hundred meals, numbed by drugs. The form on the bed convulsed as if electrocuted, gasping, and speckles of foam did appear at the corners of his mouth; his gray forelock fell over one of the bulging eyes; but seeing this Hitler die was no shock.
Then he remembered what he had to do next. The ax—
Again he froze. The ax! How could he have forgotten it?
"Rasputin!" he hissed. He ran a hand over his hair. His pulse raced. "How much longer?"
He lunged for the door, burst through the study and into the corridor. His feet pounded the carpeted floor. Bormann and the generals remained stiff in their chairs, but he felt as if they were watching him, their closed eyes following him as he hurried past.
In the lower machine room, he found what he needed. The hatchet was smaller than his ax, but possibly better for the job anyway. Grabbing it, expecting every moment to encounter an awakened general or SS valet, Rosrath rushed back to Hitler's sanctum.
The corpse was slouched to its right, slack-jawed, the face surprisingly pink, the room flooded with the almond smell.
There was nothing to do but place the ax on the floor and take the carcass by the arms and drag it out of bed, the bedclothes with it, and drop it by the hatchet. The body was lighter, somehow, than he'd expected. The face stared up at him and he thought it would be a good idea to close its eyes, try to at least, but no, no time. Then, squatting, he rolled the body over on its face. The face kept wanting to lie on its side, he couldn't balance it on its nose—very well. Guillotines cut from behind, it worked best that way, but Rosrath supposed this would do. The Nazis had done that to Sophie, had they not? The anger swelled up again, empowering and welcome.
Panting for breath, Rosrath steadied the hatchet with trembling arms—eased it down by the bare back of the neck, raised it, eased it down again—he lifted the weapon up above the level of his own head.
Best aim low, he thought, so if I miss, it won't leave a gash across Stalin's prize.
He brought it down.
###
It took three blows.
The blood came, spilling and spreading but at least not spraying (as Sophie's must have done) and Rosrath doubled over and vomited, still holding to the ax. Most of it splatted onto the corpse, its back, but not the head; that already wobbled on its side in the dark red puddle.
Blood was all over it and in its hair. The well-known forelock lay in it. Rosrath gasped, dizzy. He had tried, foolishly, to pretend he was only decapitating a pig, like butchers did every day.
A presence jacked him upright again. Rasputin. Rosrath saw no eyes this time, or anything else, but only sensed the old mystic seeking him out.
Out. Now.
Cursing again, spitting sour bile, he realized he'd let the blood get on him—his trousers, his shoes, leaving footprints by the bed—he grabbed the wet blanket. The blood got on everything. Dropping the hatchet, which made what seemed a deafening clang, he seized the head by its hair and raised it, the thing dangling before he wrapped it in the blanket. There was a burlap sack he had found for the purpose, but amazingly he had left it in the ventilation room upstairs. Tucking the rolled-up blanket under his arm, feeling only its padding and none of its grisly core, he bolted out to the corridor and broke left for the stairs. One of the generals stirred on his bench, and his gun was still beside him. Rasputin? How much more time?
Rosrath reached the stairs and clambered up. From below and behind him came a shout. Rosrath gritted his teeth mustered his strength for a great lunge.
More shouts sounded behind him, but he did not look back. He had accomplished justice! Let every damn remaining Nazi come after him, they could not undo that. He reached the top stair and stepped out of the bunker like its conqueror.
Now the bombed-out city greeted him—the rubble, the ragged walls of what once had been buildings, the streets strewn with bricks, the hulks of vehicles and artillery craters, the omnipresent smell of smoke. The chancellery garden around him was a jumble of foxholes and felled trees. Somewhere an artillery shell streaked down and exploded. He felt suddenly heavy. The Russians were close enough now to pulverize the city's interior. Small wonder Hitler had welcomed death.
"This was a beautiful city," he said out loud, and felt grit from the air on his teeth.
Stealing through what remained of the Chancellery gardens—they looked like No Man's Land from the last war—he reached Hermann Goering Strasse. He continued past a bakery whose front window remained intact, around a wrecked lorry, picked through rubble. A poster of Hitler lay half-crumpled in the street, as well as two framed pictures of men in uniform. No one wanted any connection to the Nazis now.
His arm ached from squeezing its bundle. Dark blood soaked its underside. Where were the Russians? Meet them on this street, Rasputin had said. Rosrath breathed smoke and the stench of scorched bodies, coughed. He was slick with sweat beneath his coveralls. He had time now; no one would chase him out into this. But time brought unwelcome thoughts. Awfully kind to him, weren't you? Why in the hell didn't you bring the ax at the start? You could have used it on him while yet alive. No one would have heard. You could have cherished his screams forever!
Now he felt sick, like a man realizing he'd been conned. How could he let Hitler take his own life, on his own terms? And Rosrath helped him! And—the thought punched him in the gut—he never even said a word about Sophie!
He came upon a city bus sprawled diagonally across the street, whether as an attempt at a barricade or simply by chance, he could not know. Rounding it, he encountered half a dozen uniformed men with Lugers.
Six pairs of eyes snapped around and found him. He halted.
One of the men sauntered forward. All watched. Their faces were hard to tell apart. It was as though the destruction and chaos had erased the humanity from them, until instinct took over.
"You." The leader spoke in a low, clipped voice. "Are you trying to escape?"
Now Rosrath saw the people further up the street—one, two, three of them—hanging from streetlights, still and unmoving, signs pinned to their chests. I AM A COWARD. I COLLABORATED WITH THE BOLSHEVIKS.
Rosrath should have tensed with fear, but he was too tired. More irritated than anything. Perhaps he was past fear now. "Should we not all be escaping?" he said.
The leader sneered. He probably did that a lot. Two of the others raised pistols.
Rosrath took the blanket, unrolled it, plunged his hand inside, felt through its blood-soaked wool until he touched hair and a hard scalp. He dragged it out, dropping the blanket, and held his trophy high with both hands.
"Here he is! He's dead, you imbeciles! You're killing people for nothing!"
The men's eyes sprang wide. The leader backpedaled, blundering into the man behind him. Every face blanched white.
Rosrath ran, leaving the blanket behind. He tucked the head under his arm like an American football. His hand cupped the jawbone. His skin crawled, he wished he could go back for the blanket or find a sack, but no time. Up the street he sprinted, passing the ragged hulks of buildings, still no sign of any green uniform with a red star on its cap. Where were they? Hermann Goering Strasse, Rasputin had said, but where on it? Was he heading the wrong way?
"Halt."
The voice came out of the smoke. He complied, heart pounding. It was not a German voice. The smoke drifted past, revealing a chest-high pile of rubble and a soldier huddled behind it, aiming a rifle at him. Behind the soldier loomed a tank with a red star on its side, and around it, a reassuring number of men.
Rosrath bent over and wheezed. If he'd had the breath, he'd have screamed with relief.
"Your name," the soldier demanded, staring down the length of his rifle.
Rosrath gulped, breathed, straightened up. "Jurgen...Rosrath."
An officer wearing shoulderboards pushed forward. "Give it to me."
They knew. They'd been expecting him. He forced himself erect, caught his breath, and let the command sink in. Give it to me. No words—not even when Sophie told him it was always good to see him, and when she agreed to go to the cinema with him—had ever sounded so sweet. He thrust out his arms, the thing trembling in his hands.
The officer, the soldier with the rifle, the men around the tank, stood with widening eyes. They appeared like the German patrol had, but this was a stare of wonder, not of shock. The rifleman leaned forward and seemed to forget the weapon he held.
The officer lifted his arms—his hands actually shook, like Hitler's own hand—and took the head.
Rosrath stepped back, wet with sweat and blood and the drool that had trickled from the dead mouth. He felt fifty pounds lighter. "You'll stop the attack?"
The officer nodded, staring at the prize. "We will notify Marshal Zhukov at once."
"May I suggest," Rosrath cried in the silence—even the shelling, it seemed, had paused for this occasion—"may I suggest to your ruler, that he display it in Lenin's tomb at Lenin's feet."
Why he said this, he did not know. He was no particular admirer of Lenin, or Stalin, or anything about the Soviets. But it seemed right, somehow.
A shout came from somewhere behind him—the patrol leader. Rosrath spun about, saw the aimed Luger. A shot cracked out. It thudded into the electrician's ribs and pitched him backward. The Russians answered with a volley of rifle reports.
He was aware of his body crumpling to the street, and then there was nothing.